Sci-Fi Film News Round-Up, Featuring ‘Snow Crash’ And ‘Elysium’

It’s a big day for fans of science fiction stories set in the near, dystopian future (a group of which I am definitely a part).

First, we got news this morning that the classic cyberpunk (some would say parody of cyberpunk) novel Snow Crash from author Neal Stephenson is finally going to be adapted to film. One of the hottest directors out there today is attached: Attack The Block’sJoe Cornish.

Snow Crash was published in 1992 and it tells the tale of a pizza delivery man named Hiro Protagonist (not a joke–the novel is very tongue-in-cheek at times) living in a world where nations no longer exist and everything is divided up into city-states owned by corporations. A computer virus/addictive drug threatens the future of mankind and Hiro teams up with a young girl to save the day.

Mere hours later, details emerged surrounding the plot of another hot, young director’s next project. The director in question here is Neill Blomkamp of District 9 fame. His next film will be called Elysium and, like Snow Crash, it will be set a few hundred years into earth’s future.

Matt Damon and Jodie Foster star in Elysium, which is about a war between a small population of rich humans who live on a luxurious space station and the poor, crowded masses who remain on earth and want to escape.

The theme of an oppressed subset of the population breaking out of the ghetto that was present in District 9 looks like it will be the focus of this film, too. That probably shouldn’t be surprising, considering the fact that Blomkamp is South African and experienced a lot of oppression first-hand.